Artist Statement

Abstract
Technology becomes a great opportunity to precisely express subtle aspects of contemporary time and space. One of the artist’s objectives working with “Panorama Time” is to catch the shortest periods in technological time and surpass engineers with the ultimate aims of repairing, improving and upgrading everything until the most durable and robust form is achieved.
In this paper we demonstrate examples and show the process of creating our digital photography art project “Panorama Time”. We also try to capture and document the richest moment of the iPhone panoramic camera through extreme usage-hack, resulting in glitch aesthetics. By showing how we hacked the digital artefact, we also discuss insights from several experiments in connection to broader photographic concepts of time and space.

Panorama Time project
In this paper we explore and shape our understanding of digital photography as artistic practice to find new ways of expression and possibilities to tweak time and space. We practice hacking of digital photography and try new ways to achieve expressive artistic results. Focusing on both artistic and technological discourses, we conducted practice-based experiments. In this project we try to break the concept of panorama, which might be referred to as an unbroken view in front of the viewer.

Technique
We want to show the most successful glitch experiments we have done by hacking the use of the panorama camera in iPhone 4s. First, however, we introduce the mobile panorama camera features. The main action of capturing panorama image with such a handy device is to pan the camera by following the landscape. Pan camera to the side (left or right) and the iPhone camera app will stitch together multiple images into a single photograph. A final panorama image will be long, covering a wide field of view. The iPhone supports a 240º panorama in one shot. It is a digital process, and a final result is generated by camera app by using a video-like stream of successive frames and stitching them together.

Technological Moment and Chance
Discussing our instances, which try to break traditional understanding of time and space in photography through digital means, we may also argue that such discourse is fracturing determined rules and traditions standing for the well-established and privileged world. With regards to photographic moment and time, we need to reveal the beauty of temporal artefacts, which are available at-hand here and now, and we have to catch that moment and chance to document important technological bits artistically. We experiment with technologies, which might be so temporal that they will stay in market for just a few extra days, and we will loose that fragile opportunity to gain and benefit from them or in other words upcycle their values. The moment in photography here is linked to the technological moment in time when technology temporarily holds bugs, faint links, dim faults, errors, etc., and we can upcycle them in a qualitative way. simbelis.com/photography/panorama-time

• Vygandas “Vegas” Šimbelis, Mobile Life centre, Royal Institute of Technology, Stockholm, Sweden. Vegas Simbelis, artist name – Das Vegas, is artist and researcher whose work examines power structures and humanizing aspect of technology. Research and creation unfold in fields of art and design, interactivity, unique user experiences, critical media studies, data economy and surveillance, ArtTech and FinTech. [ source: simbelis.com]